


And The Hands of Time Divide Us

by plant_boi_potter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Christmas, F/M, Ficlet, Fluff, It’s not supposed to make sense, It’s supposed to make you feel things, Multi, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 08:35:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20224915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plant_boi_potter/pseuds/plant_boi_potter
Summary: Some Christmases, a pregnancy, the Dark Lord and two very similar tables in two wildly different places.





	And The Hands of Time Divide Us

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a drabble. It isn't. Apparently.

**24th December, 1979**

They were nineteen. The two sat across from each other in relative silence as James processed everything. An oaken table separated them, but Lily reached across it, her hand entwining with his.

"A baby?" James' hands shook.

He felt young all of a sudden. He loved his wife but in that moment, he felt like a child playing a game of house. Golden tinsel had been draped haphazardly across the frosty windowsill and a box of chocolates lay open by the fridge.

His eyes passed all of this with a glaze of unreality. But as soon as he looked up, there was his wife, beaming at him. Her eyes were mossy and beautiful, staring back over the table, expectant. For the first time in his life, he could look towards the future. A future with her.

"I've only been pregnant for two months, Jamie." Her voice was soft at first but it grew stronger. "The war is nearly over, I can feel it somehow." She squeezed his fingers. Only next year, there would be three stockings hung by the fireplace.

Patting her stomach, Lily pulled back. "You won't leave will you?" She almost whispered.

"Merlin! No, Lil's, of course not." His eyes widened in shock. "I love you. Both of you." He looked at her stomach as if the baby could already see how proud his father was.

***

Peter woke, bleary eyed to the woosh of the floo. The green flames were just disappearing as James' head popped up. Before he could do anything, James spoke."I don't know how to raise a baby." 

"You're having a baby?" He stumbled out of bed, rubbing one hand across his eyes while the other sought out a pair of slippers.

"Uh, yeah but I need to know-" James stumbled over his sentences as he tried to rush through one dilemma after another. "-what do I do if it cries or falls over or-"

"James!" 

"What!"

"You're having a baby." He said it slowly, as if James was still a baby himself. 

The realisation hit James like the Knight Bus, full forced and frantic. "Oh my god I'm having a baby!" His head retreated from the floo faster than it had emerged and James left Peter happily bemused, clutching a pair of woven slippers to his chest.

*** 

Lily rubbed her temples before standing up, a lopsided smile emerging through her freckles. "Of course you'd call Pete. He's always been the sensible one." 

"Hey!" James held up his hands in mock horror before he dropped them again. His wedding ring gleamed in the light of a slow rising moon. "Wormtail might be the sensible one, but I'm the one you married."

Humming her assent Lily wrapped her arms around James' warm, lithe body and he enveloped her in a hug. She could imagine him holding Harry like that. His grip steady and sure and strong and loving. She rocked in his arms, silent and content.

They spoke in hushed tones, discussing baby names and formula feeding and birth and how scared they were well into the night. 

When frost sparked outside of the window and night-owls hooted through the forest, it didn't matter. James Potter slept through it all. Lily faced away from him, cuddled into his stomach. She didn't see the big, stupid smile plastered over his face as she watched the snowflakes settle themselves against the window pane.

***

**24th December, 1981**

There were no stockings. 

Frost nipped at the window pane and the frigid ice nipped at the window. He shifted uneasily, if he sat still, he felt like it would find it's way into the house. Once the ice from the sill had done that it would creep into his very bones, he was sure of it. He was twenty-one. Everyone was dead. He'd given it all up. He'd betrayed... himself. 

He remembered James' stricken face, his wide eyes. His excitement, darting from the floo as if he wouldn't care whether he left Peter behind. The ends of his rats nest of hair had almost charred with the still-hot coals piled up next to the fire.  
How he wished for a fire now! And James too. Sometimes.

Peter's hands shook. 

He was staring down an oaken table, not unlike the one that used to live in Lily's house. Moony had gotten them that table.

The thin, brown hair atop his head was growing out steadily. He didn't have the heart to cut it. Not for the first time, Peter wondered how much more his loyalty to the Dark Lord would cost him. 

A sob raked through his body as he clasped his shaking hands together, he bowed his head. Pushing everything from his mind, he tried concentrating again. The tendrils of silvery thought seeking the Dark Lord's mind. He'd found him once already but this time, he needed him for guidance. 

Then Peter thought about James' calloused hands and heady laughter as he'd held Harry out to Peter for the first time. How Peter had looked at Harry and how Harry had reached his chubby hands out... 

He had his mother's eyes.

Peter's resolve broke and he was flung back into the bare room. An icicle snapped, dropping to the swept path underneath it. It shattered, the sound high and piercing in the chill air. 

At least James didn't have to worry about raising a baby anymore.

Whimpering silently, Peter made an effort to pull himself together. But he felt like the icicle had finally made it's way into his heart, splintering upon impact with his atria.

Lily and James Potter had only been dead for two months. The war was just beginning.


End file.
